In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of interspecific tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘Plumsweet XI’.
During the 2003 growing season I gathered numerous plums having green skin from several different plum trees, most of which were in close proximity to apricots and interspecific fruit trees. The fruit from these plum trees was mixed, and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “Greenplum (OP)”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of my experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the summer of 2006 the claimed variety was selected by me as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of interspecific tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is similar to ‘Yummyrosa’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 13,476) plum by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is medium in size, that is clingstone in type, that is mostly dark red in skin color, and that is a red and yellow two-tone in flesh color, but is distinguished therefrom by blooming earlier and by producing fruit that is much firmer in texture, that is more oblate in shape, that is sweeter in flavor, and that matures about ten days later.